How to Optimize a video for uploading to YouTube

Naples Real Estate Photography

So your real estate photographer has told you all about the importance of online marketing and digital footprints. They have set you up with either a walk through video of your listing or a YouTube video of the virtual tour they created for you. What exactly do you do with this file that will help you down the road?

How do you optimize a video of your listing before and after uploading it to YouTube?

There are specific things you should do when uploading any video to YouTube that will ensure it is found, and connected to your brand when particular keywords are used. The next time a real estate property on the market, anyone searching for that property should find you as a former listing agent.

1. Change the filename to the address and your brand:

This seems like either it wouldn’t matter, but YouTube knows the filename when you upload it, so make it really clear to YouTube AND Google that this video is all about your listing address and your brand.

2. Upload the video – but first, set it to “Unlisted”:

When you do this, you have time to fill out the description, title and tag fields before your video goes live. If not, your video could be indexed with the wrong information attached. It may take a while for the information to be updated after you have edited things.

3. Include your listing address first in the title of the video:

With this order, your listing address will come up when searched for with a high ranking.

4. Write a detailed description:

Include your keywords and addresses in the first paragraph along with any offers or incentives and calls to action. When writing a description make it 200 – 500 words and make it high quality. People actually read them! Include multiple keywords throughout.

Add your YouTube URL at the end of the description.

5. Add Tags to the video:

It really helps to add up to 10 tags. YouTube recommends that you put your most important tags first in the list of tags, adding other tags after that.

6. Add a custom thumbnail:

Make sure the thumbnail is attractive and not one randomly picked by YouTube. Remember, people are looking at these and deciding whether to go further with a click once the search engine has driven them to your relevant post. If it is a photo you uploaded just for the thumbnail, rename it with your main keyword.

7. Add your location:

Go to the advanced settings and write the location for the town, then move the tag icon to sit on top of the name of the town. This is important for real estate listing videos.

Want to really step up your game? What you can do to boost the video AFTER you have uploaded it to YouTube

Sometimes a video will rank really well after simply optimizing it when uploading to YouTube. The problem is, in a real estate market like Naples, the competition is a little tougher. Here are some things you can do to give your listing video a little extra boost, and if you do this right, you can get just about any video listing to the top of a google search for that address. So, if you really want to step your game up in the internet marketing field these will help.

1. Add it to a playlist:

You should have your own YouTube channel. This is a big part of personal branding. Understand that YouTube and your Google accounts will be intertwined and what is seen on your Google will be seen on your YouTube. So create a playlist on your channel with keywords for your market such as “Naples Luxury Real Estate Listings”. YouTube actually recommends this as it helps them deliver accurate videos in a search result.

2. Share it on social media:

Anywhere you have a presence, post the video. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram. Wherever you are post it.

3. Get activity on YouTube:

This is important for stepping up your game. You want to try and get people to interact with your videos once they are viewed. You can encourage this in the descriptions or even in the videos themselves by saying things like “please leave a comment below” and “share this video with friends!” Remember, when someone does interact with your YouTube (or any other social media for that matter) interact back! It makes a difference.

4. Get some social bookmarks:

This is getting into the depths of internet marketing and search engine optimization, but if go this far you will definitely get rewards for doing so. What are Social Bookmarks?

…Social bookmarking is a way for people to store, organize, search, and manage “bookmarks” of web pages. Users save links to web pages that they like or want to share, using a social bookmarking site to store these links. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be viewed by other members of the site where they are stored. Examples of social bookmarking sites include del.icio.us and digg.com

Being listed on a social bookmarking site can drive quality traffic: Websites like Digg and Del.icio.us represent the opportunity to get a lot of new traffic to your website. In fact these sites offer best type of visitors: viral traffic. People who reach your site from a social bookmarking site are generally there because your Web site appeared in a search for topics they were interested in. Beware – some of the social bookmarking sites will mark links out to other sites as “nofollow”. This tells search engines not to follow the link, and so you won’t reap any benefit from additional links!

Search engines will often list results from bookmarking sites. So if your site is bookmarked, this is an extra opportunity to show up in search results.

Being featured on one bookmarking site can often lead to people tagging your site on other bookmarking sites. This may sound rather strange, but people who book mark may use more than one bookmarking site. If you are lucky they may find you through one site and bookmark you on another, which is a great opportunity for web site promotion.

Increase traffic by adding social bookmarking buttons to your website. Adding social bookmark links to your blog or web site makes it easy for readers to save and share your content, and therefore for others to find it.

A great social bookmarking service is onlywire.com. You can either create your own account there and hire someone to set it all up for you. Try Fiverr for these types of services.

5. Use a quality backlink service:

What is a backlink? Those are links that point back to your video or website. High quality websites that link back to you give much better rankings. Remember, quality is much better than quantity. Ten really good backlinks are better than 1,000 low quality backlinks. Try doing a search for backlink services. A good one is TheHoth.com

This is also known as White Label SEO.

Be persistent!

You have already gone a long way by simply hiring a professional real estate photographer to produce high quality images for your real estate listings. Once you have the foundation and content, your next goal will be to continue to attach your brand to this material. These are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to search engine optimization in general, but they are strong assets when it comes to getting yourself and your digital footprint discovered!